Delhi's Darkest Secret: The Burari Mass Suicide [VIDEO]

New Delhi, India's capital and a city of more than 30 million people is infamous for being the Seer's capital of the world. Yet the case that I have for you today still gives me and countless other Delhi residents sleepless nights. This is the story of a banyan tree, a seemingly happy home, a mass tyrovalleven and a shared secret nobody still fully understands to this day. This is the Burari case. [Music] [Music] Hi everyone, welcome to the Desi Crime Podcast, a show where we dive deep into some of the craziest cases from around South Asia. I'm your host Ashwarya. And I'm Arran. And the case that I have for you today is one that is so jarring and so vivid in its imagery, it literally is out of anyone's worst nightmare. Ashwarya, episode number one of the Desi Crime Podcast. For those of you watching this case being covered by us on YouTube for the first time, this was in fact the first ever episode we did on audio when Desi Crime was released on June 13th 2020. This is the week that marks five years of Desi Crime. And so Ashwarya and I thought why not realive the most popular episode of Desi Crime, which is the Burari case. So we thought we'll bring it out to you in video with all the footage that has now come out about this case so that you can realive our first episode once again. And such terrifying and jarring footage in this case, which ties into this story, I think it adds so much more to this story than the people who only visited an audio. So welcome to Burari 2.0 I suppose. Burari 2.0 what is? For this case, I want to take you back seven years in time. I want to take you back to the day all of this started on July 1st 2018. It's a normal day in Burari, New Delhi and it's 6am now. Everybody is slowly starting to wake up and everybody is starting to get ready for their regular morning routines. Gurchar and Singh, a 79 year old resident of Burari, wakes up at around 6.30am, his usual time to wake up every day and gets ready for his regular morning walk. On his walk, he takes his regular morning route passing by a general store that's run by the Bhartiya family of Burari. Now the Bhartiya family have lived in this neighborhood for more than 22 years and have been a regular fixture in the local community. But today, something seems off to Gurchar and Singh. The Bhartiyas who usually open their store by 6am every morning without fail have not yet done so. The shuttles are down, packets of milk and crates of bread left by the supply truck lay untouched outside the shop. So now people have started collecting in front of the shop as they wait to buy their groceries for the day. All of this immediately stands out to Gurchar and who you have to remember has lived across the Bhartiyas since 1997. Now the fact that Gurchar and Singh even noticed this is exactly why it's so important to understand how long he's lived in front of the Bhartiya house and in this locality. Now if this was the mother-yari close to my house and it wasn't open for the day, I wouldn't bat an eye. But this is exactly the point that shows what a close knit community this was and that's exactly why it's so important to understand how long Gurchar and Singh has lived in front of the Bhartiya house and in this locality. But you know it wasn't just that either. For the past few months, Gurchar and Singh has been going on a morning walk with one of the members of the Bhartiya family and that morning that person didn't show up. So now Gurchar and Singh is worried but are terribly so. So he decides to pick up his phone and call the family. The phone rings, he waits, the phone rings some more but nobody picks up. Now his suspicions are growing and rightfully so. At about 7am he decides to walk over to the Bhartiya family's house which stands right across the street from his own. He walks up to their gate and weirdly finds it open. He pushes it in, walks up the stairs of their house and what he sees in front of his eyes is a sight Gurchar and Singh will never forget. The Bhartiya family have lived in Burhari which is a constituency of Delhi for the last 22 years but they're originally from Rajasthan. A few members of this family lived there even today but the majority of them moved to New Delhi in the 1990s. In Burhari the family runs one grocery store, the one that Gurchar and Singh passed by and applied with business. They were known to be an extremely helpful family and one that actively took part in the functions of the small knit community of Burhari. In fact a neighbour stated that when she gave birth to her first child the family stepped in and helped her take care of the baby to a very large extent. They were also extremely well to do and never faced any significant financial troubles. So everything clearly seemed to be going in the favour of the family and everybody claimed they were incredibly happy and incredibly loving. The Bhartiya family had 11 members and that had earned them the title of the biggest family in Burhari. Now going ahead I just want to explain to you guys the family tree of the Bhartiyas and trust me this can get slightly complicated especially for our non-desi listeners. So let's begin. The eldest member of the Bhartiya family is Narayani Devi who was 75 years old. Her husband passed away in 2007 from a respiratory illness but this was an incredibly tough time for the family. She has two sons Bhavnesh, who is 50 and Lalith, who is 45. Bhavnesh is Maritu woman named Sabita, who is 48 and Lalith is Maritu woman named Tina, who is 42. Narayani Devi also has a daughter Pratiba Bhartiya, who is 57. Now all of Narayani Devi's children had children of their own. Priyanka, who is 33, is Pratiba's daughter, Nitu who is 25, was Bhavnesh's elder daughter, Monu who is 23, is Bhavnesh's younger daughter, Dhruv who is 15, is Bhavnesh's youngest son, and Shivam who is also 15 is Lalith's only son. So I understand that this is complicated and to put all of this simply these are three generations living under the same roof for the last 22 years. And Gurcharan Singh just walks into their house and finds 10 of the 11 members of this family hanging from an eye and grill in the ceiling of their courtyard. The 11th person is 75-year-old Narayani Devi, the oldest member of the family, who has found strangled lying on the floor of an adjacent room. Now Aran, a few were Gurcharan Singh, and you walked into this scene, which is unlike almost any crime scene we've ever described on a DC Crime episode. What would be your first reaction? I think I'd, you know, this is one of those scenes where you can't truly put yourself in the shoes of the person who's going through it because it's so unbelievable. I remember to this day, when five years ago, you showed me the video of the scene, the fresh footage you found on the fringes of the internet. And there's a picture of how I reacted to that footage. We could put up here. And that's my reaction to the footage. If I were to be a loan in the room, I mean, all kinds of thoughts would run. I mean, ghosts, God, killers. I feel like I would pass out. I don't know. Yeah, passing out might be an actual response. So yeah, I mean, I don't know how I'd react. Not surprisingly, then, Gurcharan Singh's first reaction was to run out of the house as fast as he could. Here is a quote from him to prove exactly that. Quote, it was shocking. I stayed only for 10, 15 seconds before rushing down the staircase to call my seniors. All the time, I noticed nothing other than lots of bodies hanging, just like branches of a tree. End quote. Soon after, at about 730, the police arrived and find all 11 dead in the house with only one survivor. The family dog Tommy found change to the terrace. Now, if you guys think an entire family of 11 people found hanging isn't creepy enough, let me explain to you how they were found hanging. All 10 members that were found hanging were blind folded. They were found gagged with pieces of cloth in their mouths and their mouths were also taped on top of the gag. They had pieces of cotton in their ears and their hands and legs of 8 of the 11 were tied with cut out pieces of bedsheet and wire. When the cops enter the crime scene for the very first time, what they thought, like a lot of people across the country was that this isn't a s**t. It's foul play and this scene is a setup and that's what becomes the first theory of this case and there are still so many people out there that believe that the family was murdered. And there are a few really, really important reasons for that. Firstly, because of course the bodies are found with their mouths in their eyes covered and their hands and legs tied. Also, the feet of the bodies were eerily close to the ground that made many believe that the entire scene was staged after a crime. At the face of it, the cops and the people who hear the case failed to understand the purpose of doing all of this if the intention was just. So s**t. But that's not all. Priyanka, the 33 year old granddaughter of Narayana baby had recently gotten engaged on June 17th and was scheduled to get married to a very well-off Noida-based software engineer. The Bhatya's had spent very lavishly on the event and many families from Burari had attended. When interviewed Priyanka's fiancee said and I quote, "Priyanka was a normal, simple girl. She believed in living a simple life and was well educated. If she was about to commit suicide, then why would her family get her engaged to me?" If there's something called "too normal", this family seemed too normal. They kind of have everything going for them. But with all of this now that the police had stumbled upon, you're left grappling with one question. What could have gone wrong in a of just 15 days between the engagement and to the day that the bodies were found in the lives of not just one member of the family but all 11 that compelled them to take the step. What was it that led even to 15 year old boys to f**k themselves? In fact the night of their deaths the two 15 year old boys were seeing playing cricket at about 11 p.m. which would have been shortly before their death. And a friend who regularly played with them came forward to tell the cops that there was absolutely nothing odd about their behaviour. He said they looked happy and were playing around 11 p.m. Bhavne Shankar was watching them play from a shop. We played cricket with them during the holidays and it's really hard to believe there no more. End quote. Slowly gossip over what happened at the Bhattya house became regular cheater chatter up the town. Over the course of the next few days the cops and the people of Burhare grappled with so many possibilities. And if the first possibility was murder the second most talked about possibility was that maybe one of the family members decided to kill everybody and then f**k themselves. And the main suspect in this theory turned out to be 45 year old Lalit, Naarayani Devi's youngest son. Many of those who were really close to the family came forward and said that ever since his father's death in 2007 Lalit became extremely introverted. Shortly after he started praying in front of trees offering food to animals and visiting a crematorium very frequently. Apparently in 2004 a major incident also shook his life. He was pushed under several pieces of plywood and set on fire. His friend came forward and said quote, "We knew who did it but the incident was resolved after a small compromise." End quote. Now I have to point out that when I read all of this it doesn't stand out to me too much. The death of a family member and especially a parent can be really really hard on a child and everybody has a different way of dealing with it. So while this is eerie and may explain things in retrospect, on the face of it all of this is just normal behavior to me. But this case just keeps getting eerie. A close relative of the family came forward and told the Hindu of a very peculiar incident. 10 days after the death of Lalit's father the family held some prayers and rituals in his honour. During those prayers as the priest was chanting his verses Lalit started murmuring something to himself. Deepari in the room fell silent and looked at him waiting for an explanation. Soon Lalit stopped his murmurs and all that left his mouth was. Father has come back. You need to know this. This was the first time Lalit had spoken ever since his father had died. Later a neighbour of the Bhartiya family came forward and said quote, "My children told me that the Bhartiya children often told them that their uncle was possessed with the spirit of their grandfather." End quote. If you think this makes Lalit look bad, wait till you hear me out. By this time the cops have managed to recover the phones of all of the family members. All of which were found heavily taped, kept away in a drawer in the prayer room of the house, taped to the drawer. The first phone they searched for is of course Lalits and it only increases everybody's suspicion on him. There are hours and hours and hours worth of paranormal shows watched by him and he was regularly reading about spirits, de after life, death and possession. And it doesn't have Lalit's case that after this the cops found the diaries. And it wasn't just one diary. The cops retrieved 22 notes and 11 diaries written over the span of 11 years that they believed all belonged to Lalit. Now it was the discovery of these diary entries that turned this case in a direction so many people didn't see coming. Before these discoveries were made, Lalit just seemed like a relatively likely suspect whose change in habits and demeanor caught the attention of the cops. However, after the discovery of these diaries, he turned into the man who's fall to insanity and most probably a mental disorder led this family to assist. In these diaries were found detailed quote instructions that Lalit claimed he was receiving from his dead father. End quote. "I have a pages upon pages upon pages of murmurings of things that the family should have done to attain salvation. The rights and rituals the family should conduct in order to free the souls of the dead that roam their house. And of all the things that Lalit claimed his father was saying to him for almost 11 years since he had passed away. But there were two that stood out the most to me. I quote. "The next diaries were found and left with some old mistake that they had gone away from the past. The next diaries were found and left with some of them. And the English translation is, "The festival of diaries has already been celebrated. You are far from achieving something due to someone's mistakes. There is a possibility you may not see the next festival of the valley. Don't ignore the warnings." There's another one. Your souls are still wandering with me. If you improve yourself, these souls will be freed. You feel that by completing all the rituals in Haridwar, the souls achieve salvation. I am accompanied by the souls of others also. End quote. This was written in 11 diaries and there are so many more like these. In fact, the Joint Commissioner of Police, Alok Kumar said, "We have found handwritten notes detailing how hands and legs are to be tied and are quite similar to the manner in which the bodies of the ten persons were found. They were exhaustive notes and we are currently studying them. Detailed directions provided in the diaries matched how the bodies were found with their faces covered, mouth taped and cotton balls in their ears. Hanging in this manner, according to the diaries, was an attempt by the family to recreate the formation of the branches of a banyan tree for a ritual called Bhattapasya or banyan tree worship. Just think of that for a second. The image Rida recreates. Banyan trees for all of those who don't know are found all over India. The imagery that it concours when you think of a banyan tree is astoundingly similar to how those bodies are found hanging. And I think that just makes all of this even eerie. Ash, one of the prominent theories still this day, even after the Netflix documentary about this case and our coverage of it, one that we get off in is people still believe that there's a chance he was truly possessed. Now of course there are psychological things that we will get into of what it could have been. You know, my sipnosis, paranoia, a bunch of other things, some debunk, some not. Since we covered this episode five years ago, about a couple of years ago, we went to the hub of possession. We went to the Balaji Mahindripur temple in Rajasthan where people who are allegedly possessed go to get the spirits taken out. Now whether or not their possessed is of course up for debate and I have my own views, but the point is they think they're possessed, their families think they're possessed. We have seen what those people look like. We've seen the state of. Cautionic movements. Cautionic movements that demean the. There's their eyes, there's a glaze in their eyes. Those people are not in a position to convince anybody else to do anything else. They seem so clearly troubled to put it mildly. To me, how this man who his own family was saying in casual, you know, this possessed by our grandfather was able to believe him is what's bewildering. I understand somebody being traumatized and you know, going crazy is a sort of politically incorrect, but being troubled. Now people who are okay mentally acquiesced to him. Right. It's so difficult to comprehend and not just one, not two, not three. All ten others. Yeah, ten others. Getting persuaded to take the most drastic step a human being can tell. That around is the fundamental question of this case and that's why I started by saying Delhi is the suicide capital of this country. This unfortunately is not rare. But is rare is so many people agreeing to end their own lives in this manner. It is just astounding what can be the reason why that. And also it's fascinating to understand. It's not just everybody individually being persuaded to take their own lives. Think of this lullet persuaded a mother to. For the life of their son to be taken. I think a mother will happily give their life away for their child. But for them to be convinced of the most drastic thing of seeing their own son because of their acceptance of an act, perishing. It's just what do you need to say or do to get a person in that state? And this is a son who's allegedly so traumatized by the death of his father, who's then done to his mother. Yeah. You know, there is a circle here. There is a woman here who just got engaged, who's run into her own self and there was this incredible life-baiting for her outside of this. So it's. Yeah. What's the promise he assured them that they'd get in the afterlife? And how could a promise like that lure somebody into an action so drastic? Not somebody so many people. Yeah. Just boggles my mind. The diary is also mentioned, quote, "Everyone will tie their own hands and when the ritual is over, everyone will help each other and tie their hands, signifying that the family did not expect a die. And maybe that helps understand our unsclaim of how could a mother ever do this to her child. There was another note dated June 26th that read, "Have to meet God on June 30th." There was another that said, and I quote, "Using a stool and keeping the hands, eyes and mouth tied up will help attain salvation." You guys, this is a twist in our second theory that nobody saw coming. a well-to-do and well-educated family that everyone described to be happy, one that just arranged a marriage in the house, had hiding in it, a member who for the past 11 years had been drawing elaborate plans to be able to attain God and reach salvation. And not just that, one of those plans involved hanging like the branches of a banyan tree and still ending up surviving. While all of this paints a very eerie image and while Lullet seems like this creepy eerie character to us now, Mr. Mehta, a very close college friend of Lullet, remembered sitting with him for hours into the night talking about their college days. He remembered, quote, "Lullet joked a lot. He was probably the funniest in our group, but he was always a known onsen s man and he never compromised on principles." So while he's seeming like this to us, everybody who knows him outside really thinks of him as a man with great moral principle and a really funny person and a great friend to hang out with. So now understanding the testimony of people who knew Lullet and described him in this incredible way, could there be someone else outside the family who maybe influenced all 11 members into committing this, who maybe convinced Lullet too? For that, we reach our next theory, which is the theory of a self-proclaimed God person. The police did look into this angle and that theory, our third theory now actually became one that the cops found a lead in. The question of self-proclaimed occultist named Gita Ma or Mother Gita in English. Gita Ma's husband was actually the contractor who built the very house in which the Bhatiya family lived. But after chasing that lead for a while, they realized it was actually a dead end. According to them, the notes, the diaries and all of the plans for everything that was to be done were all a doing of Lullet alone. "The story is all lies, there's no reason to lie. They were angry and they were saying that they were doing the same thing. They were the ones who were caught by the bomb." With all of this now, it seems like the most likely theory is that Lullet murdered his entire family because he fell into insanity. But not exactly. That's only till they send off the diaries to a handwriting expert and from the results of the handwriting analysis emerges the fourth and most widely accepted theory. The expert stated that major portions of the handwriting of the diary actually belonged to the newly engaged Priyanka and Lullet's wife. It seemed like they took notes for Lullet whenever he believed his father had taken over his body and was giving him instructions. The cops also recovered footage from a CCTV camera from across the Bhartiya residence that showed the two women from the Bhartiya family coming from a shop, walking to their house, carrying four plastic stools just hours before their death. And I want you guys to know that these are the same stools that were found next to the body and were most likely what the family used to f*ck themselves. And as I mentioned, these stools were found mentioned in the diaries as well. Alright, so now if you are wondering why would a sane family that has everything going for them do this to themselves, there is actually a very interesting psychological condition that many psychologists have claimed is at play here. It's called shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder. This is a syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief and sometimes even physical hallucinations are transmitted from one individual to another who shares a very close relationship with each other. Shared delusional is a very fascinating concept in psychology and has some terrifying cases from across the world. An famous example can be the notorious child killers in England. This was the case of Ian Brady and Maira Hindley. And Ian Brady was a well known racist. Through his relationship with Maira Hindley, Hindley also went insane. She started believing in fascism, became a fanatic of Hitler and both of them set out on this racist rampage of killings and are known in England to be their most notorious child killers. But that's the thing, as far as I know and from all accounts of people across the world, shared delusion usually happens between two, maybe three people. It's also called folly, they do something like this, which is off to because there's a lot of debate even among psychologists about the veracity of shared psychosis and even in the realm of psychosis, whether psychosis is real in terms of paranoid psychosis is that the thing. When you are doing, whether it's psychedelic substances or whatnot, it often happens that two people can experience similar visuals purely by proximity to each other when there is no other external factor that is contributing to that. It's just the proximal relationship they share. And they talk about it and suddenly you're both imagining the same things and seeing the same things. Now of course there's an external substance that plays that leads to that but can years of proximity and one-sided delusion transmute that to another person. We've seen cases of that happening in two or three people. Perhaps that can happen. In 11 people. And this is a rare case. This is just one of those incredibly rare cases across the world where you've actually seen it happen to 11 people. To add to that, to begin with, this disorder is very unlikely. The chances of getting it are low and then to get it an experience it among 11 people seems even more improbable like Arana and I just discussed. There's also another very common characteristic of this disorder which is that the people who experience it are usually extremely isolated from everyone else in society. And it's that proximity to each other and isolation from everyone else which makes the psychosis even worse. It's tough for me to understand much of anything about this case because none of that applies to the partias. Even though it's the explanation I find most plausible, it definitely doesn't fit completely. But then again, in this case I feel like no theory makes complete sense. If it was a serious f***. How do we explain the happy family found dead with their hands and legs tied? If it was an outside job, how do we explain the diary entries with exact descriptions of how these bodies were found? If it was Lalith who killed everyone, how do we explain the CCTV footage of the two women and how did one Lalith overpower 10 people? If it was a ritual gone wrong, how did 11 people in a single household believe they would survive a hanging, especially when no drugs were found in their body? Was there nobody who knew that they would die and try stopping the entire thing? None of this makes sense at all. No theory fits completely. But for some official closure for all of you, let me read out the final report by the central forensic science laboratory. "On the basis of the psychological autopsy study on the deceased, the incident was not a s***, but an accident that occurred during the course of performing a ritual. None of the deceased had an intention to put an end to his/her life." Another observation the forensic lab makes that hints towards an accident and not a massive side is that they believe Bhavneesh, the eldest son of Narayani Devi, actually made an unsuccessful attempt to escape. And that's because one of his hands was "found up in the air very close to his throat" and the rope that tied his hands was "loser than that of the others" indicating that while he was suffocating, he actually tried to untie himself. End quote. But what does all of this mean? What truly went down inside that house that one fateful night? We can only make guesses and we may never truly know. And this is sort of what life is like. Life is full of such mysteries, the truth about which we'll never know and maybe we'll never really know about what happened to the Bhatias. The Lullits mental disorder compelled him to murder his family or was this an outside job that someone tried to make look like a religious ritual gone wrong? Was it actually a religious ritual gone wrong? Was this shared psychosis or was it just a family burdened by some undiscovered truth that decided to f*** themselves? I guess we'll never truly know. But despite this grim picture, survived in that house of horrors one unlikely member. Tommy, the house dog, was found on the terrace of the house with a very high fever the day the bodies were recovered. He was immediately taken to a rescue shelter where for 20 days he kept suffering from regular seizures. On the 22nd of July, just 21 days after the family was found dead, Tommy too died of a heart attack, finishing any surviving remnants of a once happy family in Burrari. "If you like what we do here at AC Studios and absolutely love what we're wearing today, this is merch you can go buy all fairs. You can buy this desi crime merch in our YouTube store or the link down below at Karakmerch. Keep the engines at desi studios rolling so we can pair videographer right behind the camera to make these amazing episodes just for you."